Making the case for deferred federal sentencing for individuals (like corporations)

The Hill has this notable new commentary by Joel Cohen, somewhat poorly titled "Why not defer individual jail sentences?," that develops the case for allowing federal defendants facing prison time to have a presentencing period to demonstrate reform and their true character.  Here are excerpts:

[S]trictly speaking, nothing in federal criminal procedure necessarily enables an individual to have the court postpone his sentence so that the judge, if so inclined, can consider two or three more years of personal growth and “turnaround” on the part of the defendant.

Oddly, by contrast, a corporate defendant can get such a benefit.  If a prosecutor accords an indicted corporate defendant a deferred prosecution agreement, the case typically is put on hold for months, maybe a year or more, so that the corporation can show the court that it is, indeed, “cleaning up its act.”  Perhaps, ideally, during that period it has established a corporate compliance program calculated to monitor the type of misconduct that got the corporation into trouble. Under the agreement, if approved by the court, the indictment typically would be fully dismissed when the monitoring period ends.

So, why isn’t something similar available for individual defendants?  I’m not suggesting an outright dismissal of a person’s case after an agreed-upon (somewhat court-monitored) period of “good behavior.”  Instead, I’m proposing that a defendant’s sentence be postponed (at the request of, or with the consent of, the defendant), with the judge receiving periodic, informal reports about the defendant’s ongoing conduct.  During this period, the sentencing judge becomes the defendant’s “probation officer” by being able to determine whether the person is walking the straight and narrow.

Is there a better means to determine if the defendant is truly being rehabilitated?  Not only that, doesn’t it also incentivize rehabilitation when the judge will continue to maintain the gavel for use after this period of sentence postponement ends?

To be sure, some defendants will run afoul of the judge’s beneficence in having granted such a continuance.  If so, however, the judge would be positioned to remand the defendant immediately to begin his sentence.  And that sentence likely would not be particularly lenient — maybe even more harsh than it otherwise would have been.  That’s the price a person should pay if given a second chance and he blows it.

Yes, the procedure proposed here would place added duties and time burdens on judges whose calendars already are overburdened, and likely for probation officers, too, if the judge decides to direct the probation department to periodically report the defendant’s progress.  Still, wouldn’t the judges who employ this procedure be making valuable contributions to criminal justice in helping to rehabilitate defendants and lowering the need for incarceration in an overloaded federal prison system?   Most importantly, the suspense period would give the defendant every impetus to straighten up and live a law-abiding life.

Yes, in some cases it might be painful for a defendant to wait two or three years for his “day of judgment,” not knowing if he will have satisfied the judge when sentencing day finally arrives.  The ball is in his court, though. He can opt out, or never ask his lawyer to request that the judge put the case on hold....

I did not initiate this idea in my imagination. U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan of the District of Columbia occasionally employs this “suspense” practice in cases where it makes sense to him.  And, as I understand it, he sometimes proposes it if an informed defendant affirmatively requests it.  It seems to be working.  I suspect it probably doesn’t require the government’s consent, although obviously that would be preferable. It’s something for other judges to think about.